page_title: Restoration Movement
section_title: Background influences
hierarchical_section_title: Restoration Movement / Background influences
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) Deutsch: Der Zürcher Reformator Ulrich Zwingli auf einem Porträt von Hans Asper, entstanden nach dem Tod Zwinglis. Photo: SIK-ISEA, Zürich (Jean-Pierre Kuhn)
context_page_description: The Restoration Movement is a Christian movement that began on the United States frontier during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. The pioneers of this movement were seeking to reform the church from within and sought "the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament."
  The Restoration Movement developed from several independent strands of religious revival that idealized early Christianity. Two groups, which independently developed similar approaches to the Christian faith, were particularly important. The first, led by Barton W. Stone, began at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and identified as "Christians". The second began in western Pennsylvania and Virginia and was led by Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander Campbell, both educated in Scotland; they eventually used the name "Disciples of Christ". Both groups sought to restore the whole Christian church based on visible patterns set forth in the New Testament, and both believed that creeds kept Christianity divided. In 1832 they joined in fellowship with a handshake.
context_section_description: During the late Middle Ages, dissenters such as John Wycliff and John Huss called for a restoration of a primitive form of Christianity, but they were driven underground.  As a result, it is difficult to find any direct links between such early dissenters and the restoration movement.
  Beginning with the Renaissance, intellectual roots become easier to discern. At the heart of the Reformation was an emphasis on the principle of "Scripture alone" (sola scriptura). This, along with the related insistence on the right of individuals to read and interpret the Bible for themselves and a movement to reduce ritual in worship, formed part of the intellectual background of early Restoration Movement leaders.   The branch of the Reformation movement represented by Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin contributed an emphasis on "restoring biblical forms and patterns."
  The rationalism of John Locke provided another influence.  Reacting to the deism of Lord Herbert, Locke sought a way to address religious division and persecution without abandoning Scripture. To do this, Locke argued against the right of government to enforce religious orthodoxy and turned to the Bible to supply a set of beliefs that all Christians could agree upon.  The core teachings which he viewed as essential were the messiahship of Jesus and Jesus' direct commands. Christians could be devoutly committed to other Biblical teachings but, in Locke's view, these were non-essentials over which Christians should never fight or try to coerce each other.  Unlike the Puritans and the later Restoration Movement, Locke did not call for a systematic restoration of the early church.
  One of the basic goals of the English Puritans was to restore a pure, "primitive" church that would be a true apostolic community.  This conception was a critical influence in the development of the Puritans in Colonial America.
  It has been described as the "oldest ecumenical movement in America":
   Both the great founding documents of the movement are authentically ecumenical. In The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804), Barton Stone and his fellow revivalists dissolved their exclusive presbyterial relationship, desiring to "sink into union with the Body of Christ at large." Five years later Thomas Campbell wrote in The Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington [PA] (1809) "The church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one."
   
  During the First Great Awakening, a movement developed among those Baptists known as Separate Baptists. Two themes of this movement were the rejection of creeds and "freedom in the Spirit."  The Separate Baptists saw Scripture as the "perfect rule" for the church. However, while they turned to the Bible for a structural pattern for the church, they did not insist on complete agreement on the details of that pattern.   This group originated in New England, but was especially strong in the South where the emphasis on a biblical pattern for the church grew stronger. In the last half of the 18th century, Separate Baptists became more numerous on the western frontier of Kentucky and Tennessee, where the Stone and Campbell movements would later take root. The development of the Separate Baptists in the southern frontier helped prepare the ground for the Restoration Movement. The membership of both the Stone and Campbell groups drew heavily from the ranks of the Separate Baptists. 
  Separate Baptist restorationism also contributed to the development of the Landmark Baptists in the same region as the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and at about the same time. Under the leadership of James Robinson Graves, this group wanted to define a precise blueprint for the primitive church, believing that any deviation from that blueprint would prevent a person from being part of the true church.
  The ideal of restoring a "primitive" form of Christianity grew in popularity in the US after the American Revolution. This desire to restore a purer form of Christianity played a role in the development of many groups du
caption: Huldrych Zwingli (oil, 1531) by Hans Asper (housed at Kunstmuseum).
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